Conrad Aiken Quotes
It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb.
Aiken, Conrad. Collected Poems. Oxford University Press, 1953.
Wilson was a very formal, seemingly distant, and unemotional leader. This quotation is fascinating in that it shows a side of Wilson’s personality that most people then and later never suspected. What makes it even more important, was that he wrote this letter just after the American ocean liner Lusitania had been torpedoed by the Germans and sunk with loss of American lives and the President was in the midst of a huge International Crisis that would culminate in America entering the First World War. Even that did not take Wilson’s mind off his sex life.
Usually, a prominent politician sending love notes to a mistress does not make for a notable quotation. However, in this bizarre instance, his passion was so great that he went to Argentina without telling his staff of the Lieutenant Governor where he was going. He disappeared for almost a week and the state was left without a chief executive. When he returned amidst the scandal, he refused to resign. That in itself was noteworthy when he had earlier called for the resignation of President William Clinton for sexual indiscretions which did not even affect the government as his indiscretions did. See {628239}.
Conrad Potter Aiken was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and was U.S. Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. His published works include poetry, short stories, novels, literary criticism, a play, and an autobiography.
